Nick Cunningham

The Berlin-based company has acquired global sales rights (except Switzerland) for Iranian director Leila Amini’s new doc prior to its North American premiere at TIFF 2024. The deal was negotiated between the founders of Rise and Shine World Sales, Stefan Kloos and Anja Dziersk, and the producers Vadim Jendreyko of Mira Film and Afsaneh Safari of DocManiacs.

The 28th edition of the Baltic Sea Docs documentary pitching forum concluded in Riga after a week of workshops, seminars, pitching sessions and film screenings. Held 1-8 September, the forum featured 26 documentary projects from the wider Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus, providing an important platform for creative documentary filmmakers to present their work to key industry professionals. All winners…

Irish filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea talks to Business Doc Europe about the late Edna O’Brien, the subject of her new documentary world-premiering September 8 in Toronto. “She's in her mid-eighties and she's just so screamingly funny, but also draws you into all these psychodramas that are going on and really confides in you,” O’Shea explains of the first time she met O’Brien. “I just thought she was extraordinary and I never got over it.”

CPH:DOX’s international financing and co-production event CPH:FORUM is now open for submissions, accepting projects until November 1, 2024. This includes the new CPH:RoughCut, which will present 5 projects at rough cut stage looking for distributors (including theatrical), sales agents, buyers, high profile festival premieres and other forms of exhibition.

Dokumentale (10-20 October) is described as “a festival for documentary formats dedicated to the promotion of film, new media, non-fiction and podcasts.” The new festival provides a forum for exchange between filmmakers, journalists, authors, artists, academics and the public and will take place annually in Berlin. The festival also offers an extensive professional programme in the form of D'Hub, which takes place from 14 to 16 October.

The Cinéma du réel Competition comprises up to twenty international and up to twenty French documentary films of all durations. The 47th edition of the Paris-based festival runs March 22-29 2025. Other sections are the special screenings and Popular Front(s) programme, while the Première Fenêtre selection gathers documentary debuts from young creators.

Visions du Réel has put out the call for non-fiction films and projects for the next edition of the festival running 4-13 April 2025 in Nyon, Switzerland. The film call covers four competition sections and four non-competitive sections, while VdR Industry (April 6-9 2025) requests submissions for early pitches and works-in-progress, plus two development labs.

The 67th edition of DOK Leipzig will pay homage to the two esteemed women filmmakers, French director Dominique Cabrera and Spanish animation artist Isabel Herguera. The festival will also honour the memory of late German director and writer Thomas Heise with a lineup of films, an evening event, and this year’s DEFA Matinee.

The team behind the Ukrainian documentary Songs of Slow Burning Earth organised an artistic action September 4 at Venice to draw attention to the plight of Ukrainian prisoners of war. On the red carpet, members of the team wore clothing embroidered with the distances from the Lido to various locations where Russians are holding the POWs.

The FIFDH Impact Days professional programme helps independent filmmakers from around the globe to amplify the impact of their work. Year after year, the event facilitates alliances between filmmakers and key players within the vast ecosystem of organisations, policymakers and funders active around Geneva - and beyond. The submissions deadline is 4 October (midnight CET). The next edition of FIFDH Impact Days runs 9-12 March 2025.